A Sociologist’s Mind: How to Manage Changes Effectively in Broader Scope

Sociology brings much more depth to our knowledge with interdisciplinary understanding about human society.

Sociology is the study of human interaction, usually within the context of organized groups, communities, or "societies." It is the systematic study of human society, especially present-day societies. Sociologists study the organization, institutions, and development of societies, with a particular interest in identifying causes of the changing relationships among individuals and groups. Sociologists have a different language, but does that language offer any substance not offered by the other disciplines? And does a sociologist’s mind help to manage change more effectively in a broader scope?

Change Management is about breaking the old habit, and cultivate the new one: It takes a lot of habit-breaking exercises – the act of looking at all the different elements that affect a particular behavior, is very useful. We define most societies by shared patterns of beliefs, attitudes, and actions, but that sounds a lot like the substance of culture. Psychology, politics, literature and, even, economics have models of culture. The cultural system would include everything that has to do with how they "informally" interrelate and interact, such as language, music, literature, the way we greet each other, the way we were raised. The best we can individually do is to start breaking chains of habitual perceiving, thinking, willing, and feeling and cultivate the digital mindsets which lead to changes and innovation.

Managing change is about being aware of specific groups (smaller societies) and how their interests are impacted. Society is loosely defined as the web of cultures within a geographical location. It is loosely defined since there is a constant cultural diffusion of traits with nearby societies. So, boundaries between societies are never clear. Acknowledging the ambiguity of a theoretical term does not invalidate the concept because that's what society is; a concept. Saying that there's a rhetorical disconnect because you can't define "society" is moot -- that's not how social science works. Sociology is an epistemology to study that concept. Thus, you define society as it applies in context to your argument. And as a matter of principle. Community' is one of those words that feels good: it is good 'to have a community,' 'to be in a community.' And 'community' feels good because of the meanings which the word conveys, all of them promising pleasures, and more often than not the kind of pleasures which we would like to experience but seem to miss. Society is an organization that belongs to us and the way to change it is to modify our individual, group, and collective practices so that they facilitate both the development of our fellow citizens and the functioning of our collectivity.

Sociology brings much more depth to our knowledge with interdisciplinary understanding about human society. Artificial “boundaries” between the disciplines (“sciences”) are the actual issue in modern society because often the physical boundaries are blurring. We do need to glue back together all of the disciplines, both “hard” and “soft” in order to understand the world as a whole. With such in-depth understanding, we can cover present chasms (“boundaries”) – leaving nothing “outside of the scope” of scientific inquiries. From sociology perspective, understanding that societies are organizations helps clarify many of the terms we use daily: citizen, freedom, liberty and even your favorite word system.  Societies are organizations, societies belong to us, both through our actions and the delegation process, societies manage. Of course, since each society is different, societies will use the practice that is base suited to them. From this information, we can identify individual, group and collective best practices that we can then choose to implement in our own societies, with the goal to advance human society systematically.

Either at an organizational level or societal level, change is a journey, and umbrella term to encompasses extensive planning, outreach, culture-cognition, communications, discovery of concerns / objections / potential points of failure, addressing fears and resistance, developing a shared vision, communicating valid and compelling reasons for cooperation, recognizing sacrifice and incremental success, measuring outcomes in a shared and mutually understood and agreed upon fashion, being able to declare an end-point and successful conclusion -A sociologist mind has an interdisciplinary understanding and in-depth knowledge about business and society in order to manage change and amplify its impact with intensity and multiplicity.

Posted in: Change Management,culture Master,Mindshift